Rattlesnakes

You could give Lloydie the lot. Coffee, kicks, kickers, knickers and caffeine to boot. He's shed all those and even a surf-riding chorus. For what? For what else! A bon mot with this bon mott.

Lloyd Cole gives a rain check with Rattlesnakes but if you present it to your teller she'll tell you it will pay off just fine. These perceptible, memory-suffused ghosts of tunes have strings to air-brush their coarseness on songs like 'Mission Street'. Men hell bent with a mission; bent on hell. At any cost.

Now, at this very hour Mr. Paul Young is despoiling and putting wood worm into the Anne Peebles tune 'I'm Gonna Burn Your Playhouse Down'. Lloydie's 'Forest Fire' sets the leaves alight but, miracles, the bush remains untouched. A neat spark of guitar adds that kind of good taste to this tune at just the moment I like, but Lloydie pours no acid rain down one's throat - literary allusions for the common man are here scrambled with down-town morality. The town in Ballymena. Paul Young uses Zip Fire lighters. Lloydie just uses zip.

The sting in Rattlesnakes comes from Lloyd's mouth, not his tail, and his so-weary witticisms are more than welcome. If you tend to heat up, Lloyd won't let you cool down.

There is a class to Rattlesnakes that is rare in debuts and a maturity that allows its wit to be feckless but never reckless. Good God, the man has a sense of humour and he's proud of it. These things are to be encouraged because, sadly, they appear to be on the decrease.

I commend Rattlesnakes to those who like a hiss in their snake and a rattle in their oh, roll-over, I suppose.